[asterisk-dev] Mailing List Future

Mon Dec 4 07:27:28 CST 2023

Looks like the majority of responses are negative.

I’m also disappointed in this decision/

> Over the past few years, the use of the Asterisk mailing lists has diminished, with far more conversation happening on the Asterisk community forums[1]. The state of email, to ensure reliable delivery, has also gotten more complicated - emails get caught by spam filters, etc.. To continue the mailing lists would require a huge time and resource investment, for minimal use.

I don’t want to get on a “which is better” argument, but will add that email is by far the most accessible method of communication available to a worldwide audience of different means, languages, and abilities. It is not prohibitive by those with limited sight, easily translated, easily indexed for searching, and simple for those on even the most basic non-gui systems.

Of course there are also other benefits that I think would only result in wasted typing as it seems that this decision done.

I will say the disappointment comes from making such a change without even taking the minimal effort of surveying the user/list base/community for what methods would be most desired.

The complicated argument, in my opinion, is a bit exaggerated and the issues have been handled by so many other groups, that assistance can surely be provided if the project having trouble.

To me personally, this shows how important it is to strengthen the community as a whole, to check the temperature now and then, and to consider feedback/audience/goal prior to making top down decisions.

I remain disappointed; although to be honest, at this point, I’m not surprised by these decisions.

Regards,

Fred Posner
p: +1 (352) 664-3733

> On Dec 4, 2023, at 8:06 AM, Jonathan Aquilina <jaquilina at eagleeyet.net> wrote:
> 
> I would like to add my 2 cents here as a long tim follower of this list.
> 
> I am aware of another mailing platform for such mailing lists. 
> 
> https://www.sympa.community/
> 
> Would something like this be considered as a replacement from what I am assuming this list is based on which is mailman?
> 
> Also if you do decide to upgrade the infra and mailing list. I would highly recommend it is done internally at sangoma given then there are alot of GDPR and other privacy concerns that woudl arise.
> 
> Regards,
> Jonathan Aquilina
>  From: asterisk-dev <asterisk-dev-bounces at lists.digium.com> on behalf of Joshua C. Colp <jcolp at sangoma.com>
> Sent: Monday, December 4, 2023 14:02
> To: asterisk at phreaknet.org <asterisk at phreaknet.org>
> Cc: Asterisk Developers Mailing List <asterisk-dev at lists.digium.com>
> Subject: Re: [asterisk-dev] Mailing List Future
>  On Mon, Dec 4, 2023 at 8:52 AM <asterisk at phreaknet.org> wrote:
> I strongly object to not having an asterisk-dev list. Mailing lists are 
> essential for FOSS developer discussion. The majority of non-ephemeral 
> development discussion happens either on IRC or here on the asterisk-dev 
> list - just check the archives to see that it's still active. Most of us 
> are not on the community forums and/or couldn't be bothered to use them. 
> You can go and see now that "Development" on the community forums is 
> basically dead, because nobody wants to use it, so trying to push that 
> on everyone is a terrible idea.
> 
> The "Development" category was done on a whim and hasn't really been advertised or mentioned a huge amount. I presented it merely as an option, as it was present.
>  
> Even for users, I think the loss of asterisk-users will be a major loss. 
> Far more *discussion* is happening on the Discourse forum, but far more 
> *quality* discussion still happens on asterisk-users. Being on a mailing 
> list seems to be a natural weedout for junk questions. More serious 
> questions still seem to come through on the mailing list. The community 
> forums is far fuller of useless postings from people who can't tell a 
> hard drive from a memory stick. Nobody wants to wade through a bunch of 
> low-quality posts to find the few that might have some use. Thus, 
> getting rid of asterisk-users would see a significant drop in the 
> average quality of user engagement. But at least, even if the -users 
> list is dropped, the -dev list should stick around in some form.
> 
> To be quite blunt, the quality is better on asterisk-users because few actually use it. In the earlier days the quality wasn't as good when it was actually used more. Even then, the quality still varies on the asterisk-users list.
>  
> I know the forums can have emails enabled that you can receive, and no, 
> that's not a proper replacement for a mailing list.
> 
> GitHub Discussions aren't a proper mailing list, either, so ultimately I 
> think that will run into the same issue. GitHub has a lot of bells and 
> whistles but most of them aren't as built out as using the proper tool 
> they try to emulate.
> 
> I think #3 is the right choice. It's using the right tool for the right 
> job. If you don't want to maintain the lists, have somebody else do it. 
> I do a combination of hosted and self-hosted for my own lists. Contrary 
> to the opinions of some, people, especially technical people, have not 
> "moved on" from mailing lists; they are widely used, and I get hundreds 
> of emails a day from them that I have a good workflow for.
> 
> Most lists I'm on that used to be elsewhere (e.g. Yahoo Groups, Google 
> Groups, mailman, LISTSERV, other custom or independent platforms) have 
> now migrated to groups.io and are generally highly satisfied with it 
> compared to other platforms. It used to be completely free; it's now 
> free for lists under 100 members, or ones that are grandfathered in. As 
> the maintainer of several lists there and a member of many more, I've 
> been pretty happy with it.
> 
> I'd suggest creating a list there and letting people on this list 
> manually opt into it, since there are probably a lot of people on 
> mailman that aren't active anymore. If it's under 100 members, it's 
> completely free anyways. If more than 100 people join, that means people 
> here *really* like mailing lists and find value in them, and I'm sure 
> Sangoma can afford $20 a month for it, if it really doesn't want to run 
> mailman lists anymore that badly, and $20 is a small price to keep 
> developers happy.
> 
> Your opinion has been noted.
> 
> -- 
> Joshua C. Colp
> Asterisk Project Lead
> Sangoma Technologies
> Check us out at https://link.edgepilot.com/s/1bcb522c/0XLwQyf7QE6vbZFOkxlodA?u=http://www.sangoma.com/ andhttps://link.edgepilot.com/s/9ea5ac89/mzGwUzF2PkiBwMdnYDrV4g?u=http://www.asterisk.org/
> 
> 
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